The research interest in this paper was in the distinct dimensions of occupational and educational aspirations of school students at the end
of lower secondary and intermediate secondary schooling and on how they are influenced by regional socio-economic characteristics.
The paper pursued a theoretical as well as an empirical target: (1) Conventional concepts of aspirations should have been improved by developing a multidimensional approach that includes educational and occupational goals simultaneously and refers them to a specific stage in the educational career; (2) This multidimensional concept was anal-ysed in terms of the influence of the regional socio-economic situa-tion that school students are embedded in. We expected the socio-economic regional situation to be of particular importance for realis-tic aspirations shortly before the end of general schooling approaches because at this stage in the educational career young adults have to evaluate their wishes and chances against the background of given op-portunities in a reachable area more seriously.
On the contextual level, we used unemployment data for administra-tive districts and aggregated them to the level of relevant training areas.
On the individual level, data from NEPS-SC4 was utilised. The data sets were linked to analyse the aspirations of 9thand 10thgraders with regard to the extent to which they are affected by the regional socio-economic situation.
Findings can be summarised as follows: status-related occupational aspirations that are measured by the ISEI score in the aspired occupa-tion as well as the aspiraoccupa-tion for further general educaoccupa-tion to continue schooling are affected by regional labour-market conditions. These findings are in line with our hypotheses. Security-related aspirations measured as unemployment rate in the aspired profession are, in turn, not significantly affected by regional socio-economic conditions.
Concerning status-related aspirations, we find that students in lower
and intermediate school tracks are to an equal extent positively in-fluenced by tense labour-market conditions; meaning the poorer the regional conditions, the more likely it is for adolescents to strive for an occupation with a higher status. However, this only holds true for students whose parents have lower idealistic educational expec-tations. Students confronted with high familial expectations are less sensitive to economic macro conditions and generally more likely to aspire high-status professions.
Security related aspirations are not found to be either negatively or positively influenced by socio-economic conditions in the regional context. Hence, it seems that security compared with status is less im-portant for young adults at that pre-stage of their occupational career.
However, an additional explanation could be in the level of informa-tion among adolescents; school students do not - or only to a limited extent - gather and obtain information on sector-specific unemploy-ment rates in their region, but rely - in terms of security - rather on subjective expectations regarding a specific occupation. These expec-tations could be less shaped by actual conditions in a specific sector than by significant others such as the family, peers, neighbours, and teachers. We assume that the perception of what is referred to as a secure job can be much different from the actual unemployment risks in a sector. Results that refer to the status of an occupation can be assumed to be more reliable because information on or perception of job status can be considered to be common knowledge.
We find clear positive effects of poor regional labour-market condi-tions on the general aspiracondi-tions to stay in school. Students in lower secondary school are more strongly affected. This can be explained as students with lower secondary degrees have worse chances on the training labour market. Hence, they seem to be more sensitive to the socio-economic situation in their residential area. In Table7findings
are summarised for the three dimensions of aspirations and with re-spect to the central interaction variables (parents’ aspirations and at-tended school track) to allow for a simple overview of the results.
Table 7: Result summary: effect of regional labour-market conditions on three dimensions of aspirations, differentiated by school track and parents’ idealistic aspirations
Lower sec. Intermediate sec.
(Hauptschule) students (Realschule) students
Dependent variables Parents expect Parents do not Parents expect Parents do not
university expect university university expect university
Model 1: Aspirations No effect No effect No effect No effect
for occup. security
Model 2: Aspirations - + - +
for occup. status
Model 3: Aspirations + + + +
to continue schooling
In general, it seems necessary to refer to the rather weak explanatory power of regional socio-economic indicators. We find the importance of regional characteristics to be comparatively small given individual characteristics such as social background or the attended school track.
These findings are mostly in line with previous research. However small the effects, we could demonstrate that structural conditions can have discouraging effects on young adults’ motivation to quickly en-ter the training market and are relevant for this particular stage in the educational career within an expectable effect size.
We argue that, to reduce biases in the estimation of context effects, it seems relevant to quantify the importance of structural conditions more precisely in terms of specific educational stages. Therefore, ad-ditional research that links individual longitudinal data covering the development of several dimensions of educational aspirations through-out the entire educational career with contextual time-series data is highly relevant.
With regard to future research, it seems promising to adapt the ana-lytical strategies for countries with similar strongly developed VET systems (e.g. the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria) and compare them. Moreover, in countries without strongly developed VET sys-tem the effects of the regional labour-market situation should also be expected as students can directly transfer from general school to em-ployment. In addition to that, similar effects can be expected at later transition stages (e.g. after completion of vocational training) where the alternative to stay in general schooling is not given and individ-uals might have to decide between tertiary education, an additional vocational qualification, or entering the labour market. In this case, aspirations for tertiary education might represent an alternative to the labour-market entry in a socio-economic situation perceived as poor.
Analysing the relevance of regional contextual effects for aspirations has so far received surprisingly little attention in empirical research.
Our findings suggest that the socio-economic situation is partly of rel-evance. A particularly relevant finding in terms of social inequality is that the regional situation is of strong relevance for lower secondary school students and for students with lower familial preferences for higher education. This finding can be considered of relevance for pol-icy makers to create information, educational programs, and support for those who consider themselves without chances on the training and labour market.
5.3 Spatial Structure Counts: The Relevance of Regional Labour